Saturday, April 27, 2013

We Welcome Submissions of Linked Articles - With Commentary. A Policy Update.

For the past six weeks we've been following a new policy on posting linked article. We announced that we needed some kind of commentary from you, a few lines, a paragraph, something before we would post it. We're happy to clip some "flava" from the article and do the blurry graphics, but we asked community members to help us with some thoughts of their own about the article before we'd consider it.

Our readers have consistently shown us with their comments, emails, and low click totals, that linked articles with no commentary are their least favorite thing about the page.

Of course this new policy has absolutely killed the linked article. Personally, the RGM likes the linked articles. I love when we can be an aggregator of topics and ideas germane to the misery. But this policy may have killed that off forever. We continue to get a dozen a week or so, but when we reply with our policy, nobody follows up.

Okay, I'll keep posting them on Sundays until the RGM gets a bunch of RGM about them. I'll also check this thread again in case of a kerfuffle involving them. Memo to potential kerfufflers: I don't have much invested in posting the Wondermarks and admit that it's a lazy way to post something regularly, especially compared to Hiram's and Darla's weekly efforts. But I did run them by the community twice before scheduling them weekly.

As for linked articles in general, I like being made aware of miscreant professors, snowflake lawsuits, unconscionable legislation, and Crampicle surveys -- in short, the "aggregate" function the RGM mentioned above. I appreciate reading a brief excerpt here rather than just the link, and I'm grateful when the poster warns us about graphic content at the link.

I'm enjoying the comics, and you always ask a question -- so they're functioning like quasi-thirsties (but maybe I'd better not say/type that out loud, since then Cal's Inflexible Rules About Thirsties might come into play).

I would interject two things: RGM, this is really your baby. So if you like the articles, and people are sending them, post them if you want to. Who cares how many people click on them?

BUT, on the other side of the fence: is it my imagination or have more people been posting in these last six weeks or so since all the article posting has stopped? Just wonderin' And if so, is that better for the page?

A couple of us have worked hard over the past month to recruit some new writers and to light a fire under some folks to write a bit more often, for everyone's benefit. It's been a bit of a spurt just before the summer doldrums arrive.

I will freely admit to being someone who sent the RGM a link (about the time the cheating posts were happening two weeks ago) but didn't follow up. Mostly because I was at my department meeting at the time, and because I have been working a lot from my school-issued iPad. As some readers may be aware, iPads do not play well with blogger, and I didn't have the energy to mess with it.

Oh, and thank you Cindy! The first new Twitter complaint has just come in!! "I don't think you should be mocking students by retweeting stupid things they say. They are often just sending these messages to friends. You've clearly forgotten that many of them are not yet adults and deserve some privacy while they find their way "

Seriously, who the fuck is it who complains about things like this. I am baffled, actually that's not strong enough, at the things "community members" bitch about. It always sounds to me like people who DON't like this page are spending a lot of time bitching about it and the mods are trying to appease them.

Why? Fuck them!

Anyone who complains with what the RGM reports above is clearly not someone who matters to this page.

What many community members objected to was our Tweeterdomo actually engaging with others on Twitter since they felt that somehow these comments were representing each CM community member. Rather than hear any more complaints, I asked the Tweeterdomo to only tweet the occasional CM post, and to occasionally retweet stupid students. He has always done this based on themes, and anyone who follows us will know what I'm talking about: admissions of cheating, homophobia, proffies bearing cookies, etc.

We are tweeting nothing on our own except what members have already allowed on our blog.

I was one of the ones who was a bit doubtful about stuff from twitter being reposted on the blog (mostly because I thought it might make student foolishness more permanent/less erasable by the original author), but I just checked in on the twitter feed (which I hadn't been checking/following), and don't see a problem. Maybe it's a distinction without a difference, but retweeting stupid stuff students write on twitter, completely in public, when they have the option of more protected modes of communication (on twitter and elsewhere) doesn't bother me. As far as I can tell from my limited twitter experience, that's part of the twitter ecology.

What Was This?

College Misery was a dysfunctional group blog where professors got the chance to release some of the frustration that built up while tending to student snowflakes, helicopter parents, money mad Deans, envious colleagues, and churlish chairpeople.

Our parent site, Rate Your Students, started in 2005, and we continued that mission beginning in 2010. Ben at Academic Water Torture and Kimmie at The Apoplectic Mizery Maker both ran support blogs during periods when this blog had died.